Assoc Director, Business Operations

Key responsibilities

The position serves as the strategic advisor and operational engine of Emerging Channels, driving business performance through data, governance, planning, and execution excellence.  As the central business management hub for the function, the role enables fact-based decision-making, organizational alignment, and effective resource allocation across Retail, E-commerce, Private Channels, and Trade Marketing.  The position also serves as the primary interface to senior leadership and key functions, ensuring timely, consistent, and high-quality reporting of business performance, strategic opportunities, key risks, and resource requirements.

Main job tasks

Business Planning & Performance Management

• Lead annual and periodic business planning for Emerging Channels, translating strategic priorities into objectives, KPIs, milestones, work packages and clear accountabilities.
• Establish weekly, monthly and quarterly business review mechanisms, consolidating progress across Retail, E-commerce, Private Channels and Trade Marketing and identifying gaps, risks and decisions required.
• Track key actions and commitments through closure and support priority trade-offs and resource allocation decisions.

Data Hub & Business Insights

• Develop management dashboards, forecasts and scenario analyses that generate actionable insights for channel strategy and investment decisions.
• Build a department-wide single source of truth and standard metric definitions integrating channel performance, customer, activity, investment and operational data.
• Drive data quality, governance and reporting automation in collaboration with IT, Finance and Commercial Excellence to improve data usability.
• Lead market and competitive analysis, integrating internal performance insights to identify channel growth opportunities and competitive risks, and recommend strategic actions and resource allocation. Collaborate with Marketing and relevant functions to support channel business decisions.

Management Governance & Team Effectiveness

• Design and operate the management governance cadence for Emerging Channels, including agenda management, decision logs, action tracking and cross-team dependency management.
• Systematically improve cross-functional processes, RACI, SLAs and collaboration mechanisms to reduce duplication and improve decision and execution speed.
• Enable information sharing, joint planning and resource synergies across Retail, E-commerce, Private Channels and Trade Marketing.

ET Reporting & Executive Decision Support

• Coordinate all ET reporting related to Emerging Channels, ensuring accuracy, consistency, timeliness and clear decision asks.
• Prepare high-quality executive materials, decision memos, business cases, risk assessments and key meeting content for the function head.
• Represent the department in coordination with Finance & Operations, HR, Legal, Compliance, Medical, Marketing, Market Access and other key functions to align information and actions.

Operational Excellence & Strategic Projects

• Identify and lead cross-channel operational improvements and strategic projects, with clear continuous-improvement objectives and measures.
• Standardize and scale tools, templates, processes and best practices.
• Support organizational change and new business model implementation while balancing short-term delivery with long-term capability building.

People Leadership, Performance & Capability Building

• Set the team mandate, roles, annual objectives and priorities, aligning individual goals with the Business Unit agenda.
• Provide regular feedback and coaching, recognize strong performance and address performance gaps, reinforcing accountability.
• Identify capability and talent needs and drive individual development, succession and talent-pipeline plans.
• Create an open, trusting, inclusive and high-performing environment that encourages learning, collaboration and ownership.

Knowledge, skills and experience

Education

Bachelor’s degree or above in Business, Economics, Finance, Marketing, Data Analytics, Life Sciences or a related field; MBA or relevant advanced degree preferred.

Experience

• At least 8 years of relevant experience in business operations, commercial excellence, strategy, financial planning, analytics or related areas; pharmaceutical or complex matrix experience preferred.
• Proven experience supporting senior leadership, leading business planning and performance reviews, cross-functional governance and strategic projects.
• Proven experience leading market and competitive analysis and translating internal and external insights into channel strategy, resource-allocation and executive decision recommendations.
• Experience managing professionals or project teams and translating business priorities into team operational plans.

Personal skills

• Strategic and commercial acumen understands the value chain and translates strategy into operating plans and priorities.
• Data and decision capability integrate complex data and uses forecasting, scenarios and business cases to form actionable recommendations.
• People leadership: sets direction, manages performance, coaches development and builds the talent pipeline.
• Operations and governance: designs performance frameworks, governance processes and business cadences and drive continuous improvement.
• Influence and communication influence senior and cross-functional stakeholders through facts, logic and clear storytelling; fluent in Chinese and English.
• Delivery and agility make trade-offs under uncertainty, drives closure and balances short-term delivery with long-term capability building.
• Digital tools: advanced Excel, PowerPoint and BI/data visualization skills; automation or AI experience preferred.

We commit to an inclusive recruitment process and equality of opportunity for all our job applicants.